Red light therapy, dose by body part.

How the protocols work

Red light therapy is dose-driven. The right number isn't a duration in minutes — it's a dose in joules per square centimeter (J/cm²), which depends on how powerful the panel is, how far you sit from it, and how long you stay still.

The HGPRO300 puts out about 109 mW/cm² at 6 inches in Both mode, which Hooga publishes as roughly 5 J/cm² per minute at that distance. Hooga's own dosing window is 3–10 J/cm² per area for skin and topical treatments, and 10–50 J/cm² for deep tissue (muscle, joint, bone). Every protocol on this page lands inside that window — short and close for skin, longer and close for muscle.

Why "Both" for nearly everything

The HGPRO300's switch lets you run 660 nm only (R), 850 nm only (NIR), or both. The intuitive answer — red for skin, NIR for muscle — turns out to be wrong by the literature. Wunsch & Matuschka 2014 found combined R + NIR outperforms R-only for collagen and fine lines, and Ferraresi 2016 plus subsequent meta-analyses (Vanin 2018, Leal-Junior reviews) show combined wavelengths equal or beat NIR-only for muscle recovery. Both is the default for fourteen of the fifteen protocols above. R-only stays useful for one specific case: targeted acne spots, where 660 nm is what acts on sebaceous-unit inflammation and NIR adds nothing at that depth.

One practical consequence: switching to a single wavelength turns off one chip per LED package, dropping the panel's irradiance to roughly half. Single-mode sessions would need to run about twice as long to hit the same dose. If you care about session efficiency, leave it on Both.

When to use it — pre-training vs post-training

For muscle recovery, the strongest evidence is for post-training within 1–2 hours: meta-analyses consistently show reduced DOMS, lower creatine kinase, and faster return-to-baseline strength. Pre-training PBM (5–30 min before a hard session) has its own smaller body of evidence — improved power output, reduced fatigue — but chasing both is overkill for most goals.

For skin, evening sessions are slightly preferred because dermal repair processes peak overnight — and applying before retinoids or vitamin C avoids photodegrading them. For chronic issues (low back tightness, knee OA, tendinopathy), consistency beats the clock: 3–5 sessions per week at any time of day for 6–8 weeks.

Caveats

Red light therapy follows a biphasic dose response: more isn't better, and beyond the upper end of the window the benefits plateau or reverse. Stay inside the published dose range, don't exceed 20 minutes total in a sitting, and treat each area on its own day rather than stacking sessions.

Wear goggles for any session pointed at your face — closed lids alone aren't adequate at this irradiance. Treat bare skin only; most fabrics block 90%+ of NIR. Talk to a clinician first if you're pregnant, have an active malignancy in the treatment area, take photosensitizing medications (tetracyclines, isotretinoin, amiodarone, hydrochlorothiazide, St. John's Wort), or have melasma.

Distances and durations derived from Hooga's published HGPRO300 specs and peer-reviewed photobiomodulation literature. Single-mode dose estimates are modeled from the dual-chip architecture, not Hooga-published. Not medical advice — adjust to your own tolerance.